


Anything

by ScriptrixDraconum



Series: Steel and Roses [8]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alistair's rose, Desperation, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fear, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 21:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3585300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriptrixDraconum/pseuds/ScriptrixDraconum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esmé Cousland would have done anything to release Alistair from the demon's dreamscape. In doing so, she unwittingly stole something very precious to her Warden companion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything

“He’s been avoiding me for days,” I commented to Wynne. “It’s starting to actually hurt.”

“Well, you lied to him. Manipulated his feelings,” the mage replied.

“To save him!” I hissed, quietly. “And in the end none of that even worked! I should have just went straight for the demon’s head first thing, but… I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking straight. I saw him, there, _finally_ , and all I could think was ‘save Alistair’. I didn’t really take the time to cook up a master plan.”

The woman chuckled. “So, you reciprocate his feelings, then?”

“What? No. I just care about the man. He’s the only other Warden I know who’s still breathing. I need him.” Wynne didn’t respond, but I knew by the tone of her previous comment that she didn’t believe me. And what she said suggested she knew, or surmised, that Alistair was interested in me. I knew she was right, but I wasn’t going to delve further into _that_ conversation.

I gazed over his way. Alistair was reading something by lantern light, secluded from the rest of camp.

“I think I’ll give him another day or so,” I decided. “Let him calm down.”

“That is probably best,” Wynne agreed. “The road to Denerim is long, after all. Plenty of time.”

“Time for what?”

Wynne’s wry smile said it all, and I walked away in a huff.

Three days later, I woke to the smell of frying potatoes. I crawled over to where I kept my lantern to find the candle inside it already lit, and a book propped up against the glass. Confused, I picked up the book. It was small, and I recognized it as the one Alistair had been reading on and off the entire time we had been on the road, ever since leaving Lothering. The book seemed relatively unimportant. It documented various hymns and songs of the Chantry. I didn’t expect Alistair to own such a thing, himself not being overly fond of the Chantry, and I was completely at a loss for why he would have given the thing to me.

Examining the border, I noticed that there was a space between pages. Something was pressed inside. I opened to the space to find a black cloth, folded in half. Within the cloth was a pressed, dried, red rose, some petals still clinging on. The words on the two adjacent pages seemed random, with no markings or any such indication to draw my attention. I figured the book to be just a book, a means to press the rose.

Alistair’s rose, in Alistair’s book.

I figured it a peace offering, a sign that I was free to speak to him again without receiving an evil glare. Lantern and rose in hand, I left my tent to confront the man, hopefully in private.

Dawn was near, and I knew soon we would have to break camp. I didn’t have much time. I found Alistair near the doused campfire, playing with Potato. The man had not yet fully dressed, and I caught glimpses of muscles flexing and relaxing as Alistair struggled to free a small, dead branch from the dog’s iron jaws. I stood watching, unnoticed by the man but surely sensed by the dog. I honestly didn’t mind the view, particularly when Alistair let go of the branch and fell backwards, landing hard on his backside. My giggle gave me away.

“Are you alright?” I asked him as I approached, lending a hand to help him stand.

“No,” he whined. “My bum hurts. I might need a massage.”

“Nice try.”

“I have _no_ idea what you mean.”

“You’ve been around Zevran for too long, that’s what that means. Hey,” I lifted my hand holding the rose, presenting the fabric with an open palm. “Does this mean we’re friends again?”

“Friends?”

“The rose – it’s a peace offering, yes?”

“Ah, yes. Peace offering. Nothing better than a red rose to end a war.”

“Right....” I unfolded the fabric and eyed the petals. “Why a rose? Why not just say, ‘By the way, Esmé, I no longer despise your very existence. We can recommence human conversation now’?”

“I never despised your existence.”

“Didn’t you?”

Alistair’s gaze lowered to the rose. He gingerly took the fabric from my palm, and folded the fabric in such a way that made it seem like he was forming a bed for the dried flower. “No, I didn’t,” he finally answered, still holding the fabric. “Yes, I was… confused, maybe a little hurt by what you did in the Fade, but I understand why you did it. I do. I just needed some time to think, is all.”

“I’m sorry I tried to manipulate your feelings. I truly am. None of the others were as content as you were. I knew it would be difficult to make you see….”

“But why _kiss_ me? I understand the Duncan thing, and, I think it would have worked…. But I still don’t know why you kissed me.”

“Because I would have done anything to wake you up, Alistair. I figured, something like that would have been shocking enough to… jolt your mind. I don’t know….”

“Watching my sister be decapitated was fairly jolting.”

“I should have done that first, but I had to be sure that person _was_ a demon.” Alistair fell silent, and I posed a nagging question. “In the Fade, you said you were happy to finally have a family. But if you have a sister… don’t you already have a family?”

Alistair made a tiny noise, something between a whine and a groan. “Not… not exactly. Come on, I’ll explain while I help you pack.”

“You never did answer my question,” I pointed out to Alistair after we began dismantling my tent.

“Which question?”

“Why a rose?”

“Oh, I thought we established that. Peace offering. _Yyyep_.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked, speaking very quickly. “That I picked it in Lothering because it reminded me of you and I didn’t want the impending darkspawn horde to trample something so beautiful?”

I froze where I was, tent pole in hand. “What?”

Alistair sighed, and his shoulders sank. “I… yes. You were… so sad, early on. With what happened to your family, being thrown into the Wardens…. I meant to give you the rose as we stood there, right when I picked it, to cheer you up, I suppose. But I just… I couldn’t. I’m a coward, I’ll be the first to admit that. We had only known each other, what, two weeks, then? Anyway…. You have it, now. It’s a bit shriveled, though. Much like my bravado, I suppose.”

I stood still, mind racing as it registered what Alistair was saying. He was readily dismantling my tent.

“I don’t really know what to say,” I answered honestly. “Thank you.” Alistair finished folding the tent leather and deposited it in my arms.

My area of the camp finished, we started on his own tent. “So,” I continued, “you have a sister.”

“Half-sister. We share a mother. She supposedly lives in Denerim.”

“Supposedly?”

“Well, I’ve never met her. I always told myself that when I was in Denerim I would seek her out. I always chickened out, though.”

“Why?”

“It’s… complicated. And, as we’ve previously established, I’m a coward.”

“Your prowess in battle suggests otherwise,” I remarked, smirking.

“Ha! Yes, well… slashing a sword, bashing a shield… _so_ much easier than serious conversations with women.”

“Ohh, so you’re just a coward when women are involved. I should have been born a man – would have gotten straight answers out of you.”

“No, I prefer you as you are.”

“ _Do_ you?”

Alistair froze and looked over to me. Realizing he perhaps said too much, a pink hue flushed over his entire face. He began again working out his tent stakes.

“This is difficult for me,” he admitted in an uncharacteristic serious tone.

“What is? Tent stakes?”

“You. Here. Right in front of me.”

“Would you prefer I leave?”

“No.”

“Then please,” I begged, approaching, “tell me what to do so that _this_ is less awkward.”

More silence passed. He stood, and then he finally answered. “There’s just… so much I want to say to you. But every time I think I _can_ , I remember that you’re not… available. And, so, I swallow it down and move on. And I’ve been doing that practically since I met you and frankly it’s beginning to drive me a bit mad. It’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. You can’t help being _amazing_. It’s… just… _why_ did you have to _kiss me_? I can’t stop thinking about that. I know what you said, that you thought it would help, but that just doesn’t make sense, unless _you_ kissing _me_ would only happen in my dreams. Then I suppose I understand. Perhaps I’m just thinking too hard on it.”

Smirking, I answered, “You are definitely thinking too hard on it.”

“Right,” he agreed, gesturing with his hands again. “Moving on, then.”

“I kissed you because I was desperate.”

“I thought we were moving on.”

“I didn’t want to lose you.” _That_ got his attention. I quickly explained myself. “If you had stayed in the Fade… if your _mind_ had stayed in the Fade, I have no idea what would have happened to you. Probably, your body would have wasted away, as if you were in a coma. Perhaps that’s what a coma is…. And, maybe, deep down, I thought that a kiss was the best way to reach you. But I was wrong.”

“Oh, it reached me. At least, after I woke up.”

“And…,” I sighed. “I felt something, alright? I felt something when I thought I would lose you, and I felt something when I kissed you. I felt something when I realized the rose was from you, and… now. I feel something now. I don’t think it’s the Warden bond we share. I think it’s more than that. But, that doesn’t mean that I… that… that I’m giving up on Gilmore. I can’t bring myself to do that. Not yet. So, that’s what the kiss meant. You can stop wondering, now.”

Alistair squirmed a bit, either rolling a sore muscle in his shoulder or pretending he had a sore muscle when he was actually feeling something stronger, emotionally. “It’s just not a great first kiss, is all.”

“It wasn’t a ‘first kiss’.”

“Of course it was.”

“It was no different than a slap across the face, Alistair! Believe me, I considered that, too.”

With a grin, he noted, “Has anyone ever told you you’re even more beautiful when annoyed?”

I growled and tugged at Alistair’s tent fabric. It might have ripped, too, if it hadn’t been cured leather.

“Careful,” he chided, grinning. “Rip that and the penalty is sharing _yours_.”

“You’re impossible. You know that, right?”

“I try.”

I whimpered and rubbed my forehead. “You keep saying these _things_ ….”

“Oh, I do love to prattle on.”

I was gathering the other tent poles when I realized Alistair had dropped the folded tent and was standing over me. I stood from my crouched position and was seconds away from yelling at the man again, but my mind and body were stilled by the gentle touch of his palm to my cheek. His other hand was then upon my other cheek. As I had done to him in the Fade, he held me facing him, though far less aggressively. Before I could even consider protesting, he leaned in to kiss me.

It was nice, the kiss. Too nice. I felt ill at ease as I saw in my mind’s eye Gilmore's distraught face. Though part of me wanted to run away and hide, the other part wanted more of Alistair. As my arms found their way around the man’s neck, locking the embrace, I knew that my heart had finally made a decision, whether I wanted it to or not.

Abruptly, Alistair broke the kiss, but his smiling gaze assured me it was not because he was unhappy.

“There, now,” he said. “ _That’s_ a first kiss worth remembering.”

At that, Alistair walked away and continued to break camp, leaving me a statue, paralyzed by confliction.


End file.
